hv3 is available packaged for Mandriva in Cooker; I keep meaning to get around to sending it to /backports for 2008 Spring and 2009, I'll try and do that this afternoon. However, Javascript support doesn't work in these - the code seems to expect a function to exist in libsee that in fact doesn't exist in any public release of libsee I can find. (Bruce, does the Javascript support work in Puppy? If so I'll have to see if I can figure how they're doing it).
There's an important reason *to* use hv3_polipo - if you don't, the SSL support doesn't work. That, at least, is my experience with it.